Havok releases next-gen physics engine

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Middleware maker's latest engine is the result of five years of development

Technology and tools maker Havok has launched a major new version of its widely used Havok Physics technology.

The release is the culmination of more than five years of internal R&D effort and represents a major leap in physics simulation for games, the company said.It features significant technical innovations in performance, memory utilisation, usability and simulation quality.

The new version of Havok has been designed for the computing architectures that will define games for the next decade. It targets next generation home consoles, mobiles and PC while continuing to provide full support for current generation consoles.

“This release of Havok Physics marks the third major iteration of our physics technology since the company was founded 15 years ago. Although Havok Physics is widely recognised as the industry’s leading physics solution, our R&D team is constantly striving to innovate and push the technology further,” said Havok vice president of technology Andrew Bond.

“The result is a new engine core built around fully continuous simulation that enables maximum physical fidelity with unprecedented performance speeds. Beta versions of the technology have been in the hands of a number of leading developers for some time and we have seen dramatic performance gains with simulations running twice as fast or more, and using up to 10 times less memory.

“Additionally the new core’s performance is extremely predictable, eliminating performance spikes. We are genuinely excited to see how game designers will harness the additional power that we are offering with this release.”

2K Czech technical director Laurent Gorga added: “At 2K Czech, our games demand a physics solution that can scale efficiently and handle highly detailed interactive environments. Having recently moved to the next generation of Havok Physics, we’ve been blown away by how Havok’s new physics technology is able to make highly efficient utilization of all available hardware cores with a very lean runtime memory footprint.

“This combination allows us to deliver the high quality simulation at the scale we need and we are really looking forward to making some incredible games with the new technology.”